


I know you

by SonOfGondor



Category: The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-17
Updated: 2019-01-17
Packaged: 2019-10-11 15:33:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17449685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SonOfGondor/pseuds/SonOfGondor
Summary: Patroclus watches the university short track running team and finds someone he's been searching for for lifetimes.





	I know you

**Author's Note:**

> I reread the first few chapters of Song of Achilles lately, and this fic was meant as sort of a mirror of the first time Patroclus sees Achilles. I haven't read the book in its entirety for years and I also don't know anything about American universities, but I tried, my dear readers, I tried. I hope you enjoy!

Patroclus didn’t even want to be here. He was not even that interested in sports, but somehow universities were obsessed with it. This new year, he told himself, he’d at least try looking at one of them, and by mere coincidence he’d landed here: short track running. A sport he understood better than football at least. You go fast. That’s about it.

He seated himself on one of the benches and sighed. Things like this, they reminded him too much of his father. Sitting there, looking at the players on the field, feeling his father’s eyes burn into him, because even at eight he’d known his father wanted him to be one of the boys standing there, running there, laughing there. But he’d never been good enough. People might say not to speak ill of the death, but there wasn’t much else to say.

Patroclus’s hands were folded around the phone around his lap, as if he wanted to say: look, I’m not alone here, I’m only _waiting._ Waiting for what, he didn’t know. No one would show up here to keep him company, and he wasn’t sure anyone cared anyway. Still, he held his phone like a precious thing made out of gold. It was only then he really dared to look at the men down on the field.

They were everything he wasn’t. Social and athletic and handsome and strong. His eyes fell on one of them, no, they were drawn to him as if they should always have been looking that way. A man, looking younger than the rest of them, with tanned arms and neck, with golden curls now falling down his neck, almost touching his shoulders. He laughed and bound his hair together, walking up to the start with a thread of a man who’d won before he started.

The shock that went through his body was something he’d never felt before. It was like seeing a friend in a crowd, or like falling in love, or like finding that pen he’d been looking for on the floor for, and still, it was nothing like that all, because Patroclus, in that moment, knew one thing.

_Achilles._

And he didn’t know why, but he knew he was going to win this race. Because he was swift as the wind, and the others stood no chance at all. He knew the way this was going to end, even before it had begun.

And then it begun. Achilles ran like the wind, like the wind itself carried him, away from the start, away from the other boys and over the finish line like it was nothing at all. He wished he was holding gold instead of the rose golden cellphone so he could crown him, because there were shining leaves of gold missing in his hair. But what was he going to say?

_Hello. Somehow I know your name, and your face and your hair. I know the way you run and I know the way you smile. I know you._

He’d think him crazy.

 

* * *

 

Still his feet led him to the field, to the man with the golden hair and the swift feet. He wants to greet him, but there’s no need, because when he spots him, his eyes linger.

“Hi,” Patroclus tries, and it’s a silly way to greet someone like that. Someone you know. “I’m Patroclus.”

“Achilles,” he just replies.

_I know._

Their gaze lingers, and Patroclus mind – no, no, something else, his spirit? His heart? – fights to recall something about him. Something that makes sense, but nothing makes sense. He’s never met him before, but he’s already pain and sorrow, and the brightest of suns. He knows the touch of his skin before ever feeling it and the softness of his lips before ever kissing them.

“Congratulations.”

He just nods. “Have I seen you before?”

 _Yes._ “That’s an awful way to flirt, you know that?”

He laughs and his heart burns up. “Not if I have.”

“I think you have. A long time ago.”

“Yes. A very long time ago.”


End file.
